Freight reloader revives defunct logistics facility

Business deals often are made on the golf course. But the one that brought Chattanooga's Access America Transport to Birmingham was cut at the Vestavia Hills vs. Hoover high school football game last October.

The result is the revival of a dormant "reload" truck, rail and warehouse facility in North Birmingham that will help move freight quicker for shippers and end-users.

Warren Hawkins, CEO of BancPartners, was watching the regular-season game with friend Rocky Alling, an oral surgeon, who in turn introduced his son, Ted Alling, to Hawkins. Ted Alling and his Samford University college buddy, Barry Large, had in 2002 started Access America Transport, a flatbed trucking company in Chattanooga.

Hawkins owned the former Direct Rail truck-rail-warehouse facility in the North Birmingham industrial area and was looking for a tenant.

"Next thing you know, we were talking, and the deal came together," Hawkins says, noting that they watched Vestavia Hills win that night (Vestavia lost a rematch to Hoover in the playoffs).

Ted Alling and Large tapped their other Samford classmate, Allan Davis, to open the Birmingham branch of Access America last November. Hawkins had invested some $400,000 in improvements to the facility, which his equipment leasing company bought from Regions Bank.

The three Samford buds, all in their 20s, saw the need in Birmingham for more freight "reloading" services, in which railcars with steel pipe, lumber, roofing shingles and other materials are quickly unloaded to trucks for local or regional distribution, and incoming freight on trucks is rapidly unloaded and moved to rail cars.

"We saw a lot of frustration" from trucking companies whose trucks had to wait five or six hours at other Birmingham reload facilities to drop or pick up loads, says Davis, who was brokering freight for Access America out of a Pelham office. "Our thinking was, we can relieve this overflow."

Another potential they saw was Birmingham's being the eastern end of the line for the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad.

BN customers need trucks to pick up their freight for distribution to Atlanta, the East Coast and Florida. The facility has one BN and two Norfolk Southern rail spurs.

While the company has warehouse space to the tune of 180,000 square feet, and is looking for customers with materials to store, Access America wants to focus on the reload business.

Lumber from Australia and the Pacific Northwest is already passing through the facility, with eight loading docks and 5 acres of outside storage space.

The company has 10 employees, and with an option to lease 10 adjoining acres, Alling sees the potential for building a 15,000- to 20,000-square-foot warehouse and having 30 to 50 employees in the next two years.

While the youth of the company's executives may raise eyebrows, observers say the company is on solid ground.

Access America is actually a subsidiary of Key-James Brick & Supply Inc. in Chattanooga, one of Tennessee's largest brick suppliers, owned by Jim Large, father of Access America executive Barry Large.

One trucking industry veteran is impressed by what he sees. Miller Welborn, a former flatbed trucking executive with Welborn Transport in Tuscaloosa and Boyd Bros. Transportation Inc. in Clayton, has moved to Chattanooga and runs Welborn and Associates Inc., a transportation consulting firm.

"Historically, the problem in Birmingham with reload centers has been to get sufficient truck traffic in and out of those warehouses," Welborn says.

With Access America offering flatbed trucking, brokering and logistics - and now the North Birmingham reload facility - "they will have a great leg up on their competition" as the company makes its primary role getting trucks turned in short order, Welborn says.

"They are very financially sound and committed, long-term, to this project," Welborn says. "They will be a good alternative to the current providers in Birmingham."